Don't count out Pleasant Valley or Terwilliger

Two years ago, I was walking toward Pleasant Valley's wrestling room in February when something caught my attention.

Two years ago, I was walking toward Pleasant Valley's wrestling room in February when something caught my attention.

What was all that noise in the Bears' weight room?

I peeked in and saw the room packed with kids. It must have been a gym class, I thought at first.

I continued on my way to the wrestling room right around the corner. After my interview I asked Mark Getz, PV's wrestling coach, "What's going on in there?" as I pointed toward the weight room.

He kind of smiled and said, "That's the football team in there."

That spring I was talking with then Bears baseball coach Karl Rentzheimer after a game and we got on the subject of the football team. Rentzheimer had the same response when I asked him about the football team.

"They're in every morning doing P-90X," Rentzheimer said.

And now, two years later Pleasant Valley is in the district semifinal, fresh off its first District 11 victory in 18 years. This is no coincidence.

Here's my second story.

It's Jimmy Terwilliger's redshirt year at East Stroudsburg University in 2002 and the Warriors have just finished playing West Chester on the road — a loss if I remember correctly.

He's 18, not playing for the first time in three years, and bummed. While he's waiting for the team bus, I ask Terwilliger how he's doing.

The year is killing him. It's so tough for him to watch, he says, and not play.

I wasn't really sold that he was ready to start the next year. In true style, Terwilliger blows that notion out of the water by leading ESU to a 58-0 opening-day victory over Lenoir-Rhyne and an 8-3 season.

Too short? Can he see over the line? Not enough arm strength? Nope, nope, and nope.

In fact, he goes on to have the greatest quarterback career in ESU history, wins the Harlon Hill in 2005 as a junior, while taking ESU to the national semifinal.

After college, Terwilliger coached the quarterbacks at East Stroudsburg South before getting his first chance to be a head coach in 2009 at Pleasant Valley.

And then he went to work, leading a team that hadn't won on a consistent basis in some time. The Bears and Terwillger worked in January, February and March, trying to catch up to what the top programs in the area were doing.

The work has paid off — reaching two district tournaments in four years — and has the Bears primed to play Parkland tonight.

"When you get to this point in the season, it's not all what you've done during the game, it's what you've done in January, February, March and all the months leading up to the season," Terwilliger said. "Getting here is a result of those things and our kids have done a tremendous job of buying in, doing it right and working hard, and that has what has got us in this game."

Some people think the Bears can't win this game tonight. I've learned never to count out anything Terwilliger has control over.